E. L. Doctorow Quotes

Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light.

Who isn't fascinated by evil?

Really, no-one is bad except for serial killers and dictators.

One of the qualities essential to writing exciting stories, whether for page or screen, is an ability to abandon one's morality. We simply cannot be good writers and good people. One must be able to access one's darkest self, one's venality and pettiness and murderousness.

Personally, I prefer the dark side.

Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.

Psychology doesn't like to talk about evil. It likes to talk about bad childhoods. But I very much believe that some people are evil and motivation is not necessary for evil.

I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.

I think the character does tend to suit an episodic thing, because what's fun about him is that he doesn't care about anyone else, and it's very difficult for a main character - a lead character - in a movie to not care about anybody else.

I'm kind of surprised that so many of those other books were almost exactly like mine. They even follow the form. There were some books that even copied the stamp. It shows so little imagination.

Before I got into acting, I was always interested in psychology, which I think is very common with a lot of actors because in a weird way, psychology and acting kind of seem interwoven.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.

It's great to be able to play the 'bad guy' role, because you always get a lot to do, but I'm always looking at the why - how does a person get to that particular point.

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.

What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?

I've always thought cruelty is a failure of imagination.

A person may be totally unimaginative and have the social vision of a mole, and we still call him a decent man.

When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?

Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast

This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine.

Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!

What we call evil is the absence of Light, of love, in all cases.

We sometimes feel the shadows have got hold of us, the shadows of evil. But still, it's up to us to fight.

Mussolini?” Leo frowned. “Wasn’t he like BFFs with Hitler?